Seattle

Seattle (47.606N. -122.33W) with a population 621,000 in 2012, is the largest city in the American state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest. It was named after Chief Sealth, a Suqamish/Duwamish Native American leader. It was officially incorporated in 1889, but had been a town since 1851, when a group of pioneers from Illinois settled West Seattle, a peninsula within the current city limits to the west. From about 1960 until about 2000, the population remained relatively static, just under 600,000. However, the population increased into the suburbs north toward Everett, south toward Seatac and Tacoma and east (across Lake Washington) to Mercer Island, Kirkland, Redmond, Bellevue and Issaquah. As fuel prices have increased and zoning has allowed more growth, Seattle has grown about 40,000 in the last 6 years.

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Demographics

Seattle is "a very liberal city".[1]
Seattle is the least churched city in America, and Washington State has the highest concentration of people who say they have no religion, including athiests & agnostics. [2] The Pacific Northwest as a region features the lowest amount of religious people. [3]

The makeup of the population was 67.1 percent White, 16.6 percent Asian, 9.7 percent African American, 2.38 percent from other races, 1.00 percent Native American, 0.50 percent Pacific Islander, and 4.46 percent from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.3 percent of the population. Seattle's median household income is $45,736, where the national average is $41,994. The median age of Seattle residents is 37.9. 36.16% of Seattleites are married, 11.5% are divorced, and one third of those who are married have children. The density is 6,886 people per square mile. Seattle was also rated the most educated city in the United States, with 52.7% of it's residents over age 25 holding at least a bachelor's degree. [4]
Many people have flocked to the Seattle area to work in what's called the "knowledge economy."[5]

Miscellaneous

In 1999 Seattle hosted the WTO at the Washington Convention Center on Pine Street, and found itself the locus of a large protest by anti-globalist activists. Very rapidly, however, anarchists took advantage of the fact that the police were overwhelmed and began destroying property and looting storefronts. The violence of the "Battle of Seattle" raged for several days.

On Ash Wednesday 2001, Seattle sustained damage in the large Nisqually Quake, which cracked the Highway 99 Viaduct and destroyed some vintage brick buildings in Pioneer Square.

Sports

Seattle is the home of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics, the WNBA's Seattle Storm, Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners, and the WHL hockey team Seattle Thunderbirds. The SuperSonics were later purchased by Oklahoma businessman Clayton Bennett and were subsequently moved to Oklahoma City to become the Oklahoma City Thunder. On January 11, 2013, it was announced that the Sacramento Kings of the NBA had been sold by previous owners the Maloof family to Seattle investors Chris Hansen and Steve Ballmer, who plan to move the team to Seattle and rename it as the SuperSonics.[6]